Topographic image map of the mouth of the Nanedi valley in the Xanthe highlands

The picture shows a topographic map of a crater in the Xanthe highlands, which held a lake 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. Sediments were deposited in the lake, forming a distinctly shaped delta. The lake was fed by a river that flowed through the Nanedi valley and into the crater from the south.

The topographic image map was created with the DLR-operated High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. The HRSC image data enable the creation of so-called digital terrain models, which provide researchers with elevation data, allowing them to interpret the terrain more accurately. The colour-coded image on the right shows that the unnamed crater is about 350 metres deep, and that there is a depression in the eastern section where the water from the crater lake broke through and flowed towards the northeast.